The Catholics and the Protestants have both explained the Apocalypse in their favor, and have each found in it exactly what has accorded with their interests. They have made wonderful commentaries on the great beast with seven heads and ten horns, with the hair of a leopard, the feet of a bear, the throat of a lion, the strength of a dragon, and to buy and sell it was necessary to have the character and number of the beast, which number was 666. Bossuet finds that this beast was evidently the Emperor Diocletian, by making an acrostic of his name. Grotius believed that it was Trajan. A curate of St. Sulpice, named La Chétardie, known from some strange adventures, proves that the beast was Julian. Jurieu proves that the beast is the pope. One preacher has demonstrated that it was Louis XIV. A good Catholic has demonstrated that it was William, king of England. It is not easy to make them all agree. There have been warm disputes concerning the stars which fell from heaven to earth, and the sun and moon, which were struck with darkness in their third parts. There are several opinions respecting the book that the angel made the author of the Apocalypse eat, which book was sweet to the mouth and bitter to the stomach. Jurieu asserted that the books of his adversary were designated thereby, and his argument was retorted upon himself. There have been disputes about this verse: "And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder; and I heard the voice of harpers harping on their harps." It is quite clear that it would have been better to have respected the Apocalypse than to have commented upon it. Camus, bishop of Bellay, printed in the last century a large book against the monks, which an unfrocked monk abridged. It was entitled "Apocalypse," because in it he exposed the dangers and defects of the monastic life; and "Melito's Apocalypse" (_"Apocalypse de Méliton?"_), because Melito, bishop of Sardis, in the second century, had passed for a prophet. This bishop's work has none of the obscurities of St. John's Apocalypse. Nothing was ever clearer. The bishop is like a magistrate saying to an attorney, "You are a forger and a cheat--do you comprehend me?" The bishop of Bellay computes, in his Apocalypse or Revelations, that there were in his time ninety-eight orders of monks endowed or mendicant, living at the expense of the people, without employing themselves in the smallest labor. He reckoned six hundred thousand monks in Europe. The calculation was a little strained; but it is certain that the real number of the monks was rather too large.